1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a drawing control device, a laser-light emitting system, a drawing method, and a computer program product.
2. Description of the Related Art
Laser markers, as is known in the art, write a shape such as a character or a symbol, on an object such as a thermal rewritable medium or a metal, by illuminating the object with laser light. Such laser markers are widely used in various fields. In a physical distribution system, for example, a laser marker is used to print a name of goods and a destination of goods on a thermal rewritable medium that is attached to a container or the like.
It is often requested to write a shape on an object in a brightness-inverted manner, or, equivalently, such that brightness of a shape portion is inverted and brightness of a background portion is inverted, in order for the shape on the object to be highly visible. For instance, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2005-310048 discloses a technique of inverting brightness of code symbols of a two-dimensional code to generate brightness-inverted code symbols, further converting the brightness-inverted code symbols into marking data, such as dot data or scan data, and then marking the brightness-inverted two-dimensional code on a work piece, with laser by using the marking data.
However, the conventional technique described above requires rasterization for conversion into marking data, such as dot data or scan data. In addition, the brightness-inverted shape has to be drawn using a raster scan method because the marking data, such as dot data or scan data, is used for drawing. Accordingly, the conventional technique requires a large amount of processing to draw the brightness-inverted shape, which renders the drawing time consuming.
In view of the above circumstances, an object of the present invention is to provide a drawing control device capable of drawing a brightness-inverted shape with reduced drawing time, a laser-light emitting system, a drawing method, and a computer program product.